Scratching is one of the most infuriating sounds I have ever heard, by itself it's just annoying, but when it's in the middle of the night, then it's outraging. ”Damn cat”, I love him but come on this has been going on for a month, and he never did it before. I had Thunder for 5 years ever since he was a little kitten, now he is just a fluffy bastard.

I pull my pillow over my ears, hoping to muffle the noise. After a while I roll over to retrieve my ear buds and put on some music. This does the job, because not even two minutes later I shut my eyes, and open them immediately to the sound of my phone's alarm clock. The morning sun peeking through my window blinds, and with a glance at the time 6:25, I need to hurry for school.

I sit up drowsy, my left side’s leg and hand are filled with static since I slept on my side, the feeling is quite unbearable. At least it isn’t a charley horse. My room has an orange hue to it, with a plain white ceiling, the walls are peachy, with bits of paint chipped off the drywall. My TV hangs by a single rope in a triangle fashion, attached to two screws in the wall. Right under the TV is my wooden dresser, though I barely use it as a dresser and more of a table for books and miscellaneous objects. In fact my clothes lay in a basket outside of the dresser, I was meaning to sort them, but never got to it.

I scoot to the side of the bed, not realizing my sleeping foot is still wrapped tightly in the covers, and my descent to the carpeted floor was a nice way to wake up the body. It didn’t hurt really, but I toppled a few items off my shelf to the right. I tug loose the covers, and stand up to continue on my way. A little hobble from a sleeping foot truly is one of the worst ways to wake up, and with my phone vibrating in my pocket it is now 6:30. That was fast, I head over to the light switch Click

After a minute of changing I leave my room. To my left is the door to the attic, the attic’s floor is slightly unstable and splinters galore so you gotta wear shoes plus watch your step, back out in front of my door is my mother’s art room. I haven’t entered that room in awhile, mainly because it makes me sad to look at the unfinished paintings and tapestries. Click I shut off the light and close the door to my room behind me.

On the right is the staircase leading downstairs to the first floor of the house where a certain gray haired cat is staring up at me. My boy Thunder has a fuzzy mane and tail, which makes his adorableness go up tremendously, so does the hair scattered across the furniture in the living room. On my way down the stair creak from the old wood, and my feline greets me with a whispered “meow”, he's not a loud cat and his meows come out hushed. Once I’m on the same level as him I snatch the kitty up, flip him on his back, and continue to walk in and out the kitchen, pass my father's room, and right into the living, where a half full cat bowl sits on the foot of a cat tree by the sunny window in the right corner of the room. I look at my cat, the night time scratching culprit.

“You know you are a real ass right?” He stares back blankly “Is that all you have to say?… Is this your defense?” Silence “hmmm I see” and with that a new evolved flying cat was born, which said cat landed gracefully on the couch cushions. I walk to the cabinet next to my house’s entry door grabbing my wallet and backpack. I leave out the door, across the driveway, and head down the street. The sunlight leaves a warm feeling where it touches, and the wind is light keeping the warmth in check, wonderful spring weather.

I stand at the end of my block, and with the stop sign to my back I wait for the bus. This has been embedded into my morning, hell sometimes on the weekends I find myself continuing the routine. I unconsciously fiddle with the bracelet on my arm. It’s cool stainless steel feels nice on this bright morning. The bracelet is one of the last things my mother gave to me. Words are embedded in it, the light is salvation, sounds nice right, at least I think so… maybe it's religious? I never viewed my mother as a religious person, at least she never showed or forced it, I know I certainly ain’t, but I think it looks neat. Someone grabs my shoulder making me scream internally, I jerk around to confront the shoulder perpetrator and am met with the top of a head. Looking down I see a familiar face.

“Nice forehead.” My comment is met with a swift kick to the knee, but felt like hardly any effort was put behind it.

“You know that staring at a house's window is creepy right?” she snaps back, I haven’t realized what I was looking at.

“Well maybe I was thinking about robbing the place” I point at a random house “I heard they have a Jacuzzi.”

“That’s Matthew’s house, he can’t even afford a wallet.”

“Grace,” I put on the straightest face I can muster, “it's a cover up.”

“Sure, you tell him that.”

“I might” I let loose a smile “ well good morning to you grace.”

“Morning to you too, did I spook you earlier.”

“Of course, who wouldn’t be scared of coming into contact with a short person” that too got another kick to the knee.

“You know that doesn’t hurt right?”

“You want me to aim higher?”

“No, I'm good, I still have my life ahead of me.” I look around “hey where's your brother?”

“He wanted to drive to school today since he got his license.”

“You didn’t catch a ride with him?”

“Nah, the school bus will take longer, more time to sleep.”

“Yeah, I understand that” after some more shooting the ship, insults, and some of the most funny jokes mankind has ever had the grace of hearing, the bus finally came. The metal bus window was cool, and the sun glaring through kept the seats warm which relaxed me to sleep, but a push on my side woke me up “come on, we’re at school.” Grace hurried off the bus, I stretched and made my way off the bus, meeting back up with Grace. We continue to walk to our first period class.

“Dream about anything?”

“Nope. Did you study for the chemistry test?”

“Nope. You?”

“I wrote some notes.” I don’t usually need to study for tests, my memory helps me tremendously, but I been making notes ever since this shorty noticed I never seemed to get lower than a B in any subject, I have only been recently putting in extra work just so she can pass her classes, it started with English, then science, now almost all subjects that we both happen to have together. I’m not complaining though, sure it can get annoying, but I enjoy the friendship… I guess. A thought crosses my mind “Hey grace.”

“Yeah?”

“Who else do you hang out with?”

“Not many other people… why?”

“Since I met you, I just haven’t seen you mess about with anyone.. other than me.”

“Well not a lot of people can stand my brother, and they actively avoid him like a plague.”

“He is an ass is he not?” He has a temper, but he's mostly all talk, except when it comes to me. For some reason he likes to ‘mess’ with me, I personally don’t really care, I’ve learned a while ago that status is a dumb thing to worry about.

“Try living with him, all he ever does is cause me despair”

“I see you are broadening your vocabulary”

“Someone has to match yours, ya nerd.”

“Technically I’m considered a geek, and very loosely can be considered a dork.”

“At this rate I might not.”

‘I appreciate the effort.”

We reach first period class and take our seats. It's English, not my favorite class, surprising since I have a wide range of words. The only reason I like to look up, and use different words is so I can come up with better jokes, and better insults. It makes me feel more unique, and it generally makes me use my brain more to get creative. It’s a nice hobby. English continued with nothing special, I split off from Grace, and went to math, followed that with history next, and went to lunch. Afterwards I met back up with Grace, and handed her my notes after I fished them out in history, and we went to chemistry. We sit closer to the back by the windows on the side of the room, which makes it easier to talk and give answers to questions. The teacher tells the class to get quiet and remove everything, but a pencil from our desks. She hands out the test which has three papers stapled together, when I got mine I realized it is all multiple choice, which is great and makes things easier. I finished the test in around fifteen minutes, turned it in, and sat back in silence for the rest of the 43 minute period.

“How did you do?” I asked Grace while we walked to gym

“Don’t know, I barely had enough time to skim through your notes, had to guess at a few.”

“Well I did pretty good I believe.”

“Didn’t ask.”

“Well we’ll see if I give you notes at all next time.”

“Well how about you give them to me a few periods in advance.”

“I need to study them too.”

“You made them! You should already know them.”

“Don’t know what you're talking about.”

“Whatever.”

We made it to the gym floor where I was immediately hit with a kick ball to the shoulder, more surprising than anything.

“Why didn’t you catch it?” Grace’s brother Gideon says sarcastically as he walks up to us, he isn’t really athletic, he’s skinny, but he talks a good amount which tends to draw in a crowd.

“Kinda hard to catch something when you aren’t prepared.”

“You always need to stay alert Wyatt.” he picks up the ball.

“I’ll try to remember that.” I walked towards the benches to set down my school work for next period, and took off my bracelet. It was starting to leave an imprint on my arm, thump the ball smacked my hand sending my bracelet flying.

“Hey stop that! What did he do to you?” Grace exclaimed towards Gideon

“What? I’m just messin' with him, you don't need to get bent out of shape.”

“Just leave him be.”

“Forget about it.” I said “Hey Grace, come help me, I can't find where my bracelet went.”

“Yeah hold up.” she grabbed Gideon “See what you did you moron, help us find his bracelet.”

“Nah, he asked you.”

“That was his mother’s, the woman that went missing.”

“The one where they only found her hand?”

“You two aren’t really being quiet, please just help me.”

“Yeah sorry.” Grace helped me move the benches to look for it, and Gideon grew a big enough heart to at least look at the benches, but class started. Damn it, this is annoying as hell, why couldn’t he just screw off. Everyday with this crap, the gym teacher puts us into teams of two for kick ball, home base and three other bases are set up. Home base is an actual base, while the other three are these blue rectangular mats. Our team kicks first, we all line up about twelve kids a team, and I’m second to last, the last being Grace.

“Hey look, we'll find your bracelet.”

“Yeah I know. It’s just so frustrating to deal with him, you know.”

“Look.” Grace reaches into her pocket and pulls out a black ring with a blue line that goes through it on the exterior. “I got this ring at the mall, my grandma bought it before she passed, I would be upset too if I lost it.”

“I didn’t lose my bracelet.”

“That's not what I meant by that, look just know that I will help you so relax okay.”

“Sure.” She is not wrong, at least someone will help me look. We got through about half of my team before we switched sides. I’m not great at kickball, I know how to play, but I can’t catch well so I tend to be on the outskirts and wait for the ball to land so I can throw it to second base. Gym proceeded on until the scores were 14 to 13, the other team was kicking, but they had only one more out until we had to switch again. Gideon was on second base, and I was moved up towards the third, the ball was kicked it rolled, and I picked it up Gideon rushed towards third and I went to throw, I messed up the throw and it was going to missed, but Gideon flinched forward taking the ball directly to the left ear.

“Head-shots don’t count!” he yelled to the gym teacher, but he said Gideon was out because he moved his head into the ball’s path. He turned around and glared at me, but I was feeling great about the whole situation. When there was only five minutes left in the period I went to look for the bracelet, but still couldn’t find it before the bell rang.

“Hey, you'll find it tomorrow.” Grace told me as we walked towards the buses at the end of the day.

“I hope.” I look over to see Grace is wearing her ring. A truck’s engine startled me, and other students standing by as it rode up by the sidewalk. They rolled down their window revealing the driver to be Gideon.

“Missing something!” he dangles my silver bracelet out the window “I think I’ll keep it for the night, looks nice.” he rolls up the window and drives off.

“That ass-hat!” Grace screamed towards the direction he rode off in, she turned to me. “Don’t worry I’ll get it back tonight, I’ll stop by your house to drop it off.”

“Thanks, but you don’t have to do that, you can just wait till tomorrow to return it to me.”

“Yeah I could, but I probably will get in a fight with him, so I’ll just spend the night at a friend's house and drop it off on my way.”

“If you want to, I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“I won’t.”

We reached the buses and rode home. Grace walked over to her friend’s house to ask for permission to spend the night, while I walked off to the park nearby to clear my head. I sat on a bench and watched the trees wave in the wind, it felt nice out. My thoughts linger on Gideon, why did he just take it, did I piss him off that badly? I barely did anything. Why can’t I just have a nice day, the weather was great today, shouldn’t that have been a good sign. I don’t know how to feel, my thoughts just repeat, I didn’t care if we won or lost, I just lucked out in the end. I sat there till the sun started to go down, my mind wasn't cleared, but I'm relaxed at least.

I made it home and darkness had settled in, but to my surprise the front door was opened. My dad’s car was not here so, I assume he is at work., I walked in and all the lights were turned off, I went to the switch and clicked it on. The cat food bowl still had food in it. I walked deeper into the house, and passed my father’s room. I clicked on the kitchen light that was hung on the wall outside the kitchen, but it didn’t light up the kitchen. I walked in and looked around. there everything was still the same, besides the lack of light, where’s my cat. “Thunder! Food!” I heard movement upstairs, and a door opened, nobody should be here. I pulled out my phone, and dialed 911.

“This is 911, what's your emergency?” the operator said, “Someone is in my house.” I whispered “Where do you live, sir .” I told them my address, and they responded “A unit is on their way, are you somewhere safe.” I look up, and a hand works its way around the stair wall. It's bony and pale, I step back but I can’t move as fast as I would like to, it feels like my muscles are heavy everything is moving slowly. I look back towards the hand, and my stomach drops. I see what looks like a face but it's not, it has eyes, well eye sockets, it's hollow. I feel awful, I can’t breathe, I drop to my back, my phone lands on the floor and shuts off, I laid against the wall. Its hand moves around the corner like a snake, everything is slow, my eyes won’t leave the face, I don’t know how, but I know it's grinning at me, but it has no mouth. Its face stays behind the corner of the wall, but its hand is getting impossible closer to me, my mind can’t think, where's my thoughts. Its hand is here, what can I do, I can’t do anything, help, please help. Click the light flicks on, and the hand slither back behind the wall, and the face is already gone.

“Wyatt! What happened! Why are you crying!?” Grace runs into the kitchen. My eyes are wet, the light switch is on the other side of the wall and she couldn’t see anything.

“We.. have.. to go.” My voice comes out as if I ran for miles, I'm terrified, I have to leave, she needs to leave.

She grabbed my hand to pull me up, I felt something metallic in it, I stood up off the wall. She let me go, and left the metallic item in my hand, it's my bracelet, “I walked in when I saw the door was left open, what wrong?” the engraved words on the bracelet stood out to me the light is salvation

“We need to go.” My feeling in my body is returning

“Why?”

“Something is in the house, we need to leav-” Click the room is layered in darkness. The staircase leads into the kitchen, but it also can lead to the bathroom, which in turn is another route to the room with the kitchen switch. No no no no, I went to grab Grace, too late, the things hand pulled at Grace's leg, everything slowed. It dragged her up the stairs, before I even made it to the corner of the staircase wall, she screamed all the way up, then silence. I scrambled up the stairs, when I reached the top only my mother’s art room door was open, sirens in the distance. I move into the door not knowing what to expect, once in I am only met with nothing but scattered paintings. The walls flash from red to blue from the now opened window leaving this room feeling cold. My eyes searched the room for anything, they stopped at the bottom of the opened window, an amputated hand with a black ring that had a blue line on its exterior laid there.